Джорджетт Хейер - April Lady

“That doesn’t signify! And although I own it would be imprudent to marry Jeremy if I were indigent too I am not indigent, so that’s of no consequence either!”

“I promise you I shan’t refuse my consent on that head, if, when he returns from Brazil, you still wish to marry him.”

“And what if some odious, designing female has lured him into marrying her?” she demanded.

“He assured me that his nature is tenacious, so we must hope that he will be proof against all designing females,” he replied lightly.

“You don’t hope that! You don’t wish me ever to marry him!”

“No, of course I don’t! Good God, child, how could I wish you to throw yourself away so preposterously, far less help you to do it when you are hardly out of the schoolroom?”

“If he were a man of rank and fortune you wouldn’t say I was too young!”

“If he were a man of rank and fortune, my dear, he would not be taking up a post as some kind of secretary in Rio de Janeiro. But if it comforts you at all I don’t wish to see you married to anyone for a year or two yet.”

“Oh, don’t talk to me as if I were a silly little child!” she cried passionately.

“Well, I don’t think you are very wise,” he said.

“No, perhaps I’m not wise, but I’m not a child, and I know my own mind! You aren’t very wise either, if you think I shall change it, or forget Jeremy! I shall remember, and be unhappy for two whole years, and very likely more! I daresay you don’t care for that, for I see that you aren’t kind, which I thought you were, but, on the contrary, perfectly heartless!”

“Not a bit of it!” he said cheerfully. “With the best will in the world to do it, I fancy you won’t fall quite into dejection. There will still be balls to attend, and new, and extremely expensive dresses to buy.”

“I don’t want them!”

“I wish I might believe you! Do you mean to abjure the fashionable life?”

She threw him a smouldering look. “You may laugh at me, but I warn you, Cardross, I am determined to marry Jeremy, do what you will to prevent me!”

He replied only with an ironical bow; and after staring defiantly at him for an instant, she swept from the room with an air of finality only marred by the unfortunate circumstance of her shutting a fold of her gown of delicate lilac muslin in the door, and being obliged to open it again to release the fabric.

Twenty minutes later Nell came softly into the room. The Earl looked up impatiently, but when he saw his wife standing on the threshold his expression changed, and he smiled at her, saying in a funning tone: “How do you contrive, Nell, always to appear prettier than I remembered you?”

She blushed adorably. “Well, I did hope you would think I looked becomingly in this gown,” she confessed naively.

“I do. Did you put it on to dazzle me into paying for it?”

This was said so quizzically that her spirits rose. It had taken a great deal of resolution to bring her to the library that morning, for a most unwelcome missive had been delivered by the penny post. Since the Earl paid five shillings to the General Post office every quarter for the privilege of receiving an early London delivery Madam Lavalle’s civil reminder to her ladyship that a court dress of Chantilly lace was still unpaid for had lain on Nell’s breakfast-tray. It was not an encouraging start to the day. It had quite destroyed Nell’s appetite, and had filled her with so much frightened dismay that for an unreasoning hour she could think of no other way out of her difficulties than to board the first mail-coach bound for Devonshire, and there to seek refuge with her mama. A prolonged period of reflection, however, showed her the unwisdom of this course, and convinced her that since it was extremely unlikely that a thunderbolt would descend mercifully upon her head there was nothing for it but to make a clean breast of the matter to Cardross, devoutly trusting that he would understand how it had come about that she had forgotten to give him Madame Lavalle’s bill with all the others which he had commanded her to produce.

But the more she thought of it the less likely it seemed that he could possibly understand. She felt sick with apprehension, recalling his stern words. He had asked her if she was quite sure she had handed all her bills to him; he had warned her of the awful consequences if he found she had lied to him; and although he had certainly begged her, later, not to be afraid of him, it was not to be expected that he would greet with equanimity the intelligence that his wife had overlooked a bill for three hundred and thirty-five guineas. It even seemed improbable that he would believe she really had overlooked it. She herself was aghast at her carelessness. She was so sure that she had given the bill to Cardross with all the others collected from a drawer crammed with them that her first thought on seeing Madame Lavalle’s renewed demand was that that exclusive modiste had erred. But an agitated search had brought the previous demand to light, wedged at the very back of the drawer. It was by far the heaviest single item amongst her debts, casting into the shade the milliner’s bill which had staggered Cardross. What he would say she dared not consider, even less what he might do. At the best he must believe her to be woefully extravagant (which, indeed, she knew she had been), and he would be very angry, though forgiving. At the worst—but to speculate on what he might do at the worst was so fatal to resolution that she would not let herself do it.

With a childlike hope of pleasing him, she had arrayed herself in a gown which she knew (on the authority of that arbiter of taste, Mr. Hethersett) became her to admiration. It had instantly won for her a charming compliment, and she was now able to reply, not without pride: “No, no, it is paid for!” She added honestly, after a moment’s reflection: “ You paid for it!”

“It is a great satisfaction to me to know that I didn’t waste my money,” he said gravely, but with laughter in his eyes.

This was a much more promising start to the interview than she had expected. She smiled shyly at him, and was just about to embark on a painful explanation of her new embarrassment when he said: “Are you Letty’s envoy, then? I own, I might listen with more patience to you than to her, but on this subject I am determined to remain adamant!”

Not sorry to be diverted from her real errand, she said: “Of course, I do see that it would be throwing herself away quite shockingly, but I believe you will be obliged, in the end, to consent. Well, I thought myself that it was just a fancy that would pass when she had seen more of society, and had met other gentlemen, but it isn’t so, Cardross! She hasn’t swerved from her devotion to Mr. Allandale, even though she has been made up to by I don’t know how many others—and all of them,” she added reflectively, “of far greater address than poor Mr. Allandale!”

“Nell!” he interrupted. “Can you tell me what she perceives in that dead bore to dote upon?”

She shook her head. “No, there is no accounting for it,” she replied. “She doesn’t know either, which is what makes me feel that it is a case of true love, and certainly no passing fancy.”

“They are totally unsuited!” he said impatiently. “She would ruin him in a year, what’s more! She is as extravagant as you are, my love!” He saw the stricken look in her face, the colour ebbing from her cheeks, and instantly said: “What an unhandsome thing to say to you! I beg your pardon: that is all forgotten—a page which we have stuck down, and shan’t read again. My dear Nell, if you could but have heard that absurd young man addressing me in flowing periods this morning! Do you know that he proposed in all seriousness to carry Letty off to Brazil?”